Chapter 4 - The Shattered Truth
The bakery was silent except for the hum of the old refrigerator and the relentless pounding of the rain.
"Don't lie to me," I said, my voice shaking. "I saw her blouse open. I saw you holding her against the desk. I saw the look on her face."
Damian slowly pushed himself up from the floor. He didn't move toward me. He leaned heavily against the pastry counter, looking like a man who had been carrying a corpse on his back for a thousand days.
"Cassidy owed money, Vivien," Damian said, his voice flat, devoid of all its usual power. "A lot of money. To the Barone family. She had a gambling addiction she had been hiding from you since college. When you married me, she thought she was protected, but the Barones don't care about my protection unless it's enforced."
I shook my head, my mind rejecting the words. "No. Cassidy didn't gamble. She was a teacher."
"She was drowning in debt," Damian corrected gently. "She came to me for help a week before the incident. I told her I would handle it, but I underestimated how quickly the Barones would move. That night... the night you came to the study... they caught her walking home."
My stomach plummeted. The metallic smell of the study suddenly rushed back into my memory.
Blood. Sharp, metallic, wrong.
"They stabbed her, Vivien," Damian said, his voice breaking. "They stabbed her in the ribs and left her in the alley behind our building. My security detail found her and brought her up through the private elevator because we couldn't risk the police seeing her. When you walked into that study..."
He looked up at me, the tears freely falling now.
"When you walked in, I wasn't touching her in passion. I had torn her blouse open to find the wound. I was pressing my hands against her ribs, trying to stop the bleeding. The blood on the desk... it was hers. It was pouring out of her."
The bread knife slipped from my fingers, clattering loudly against the linoleum.
"No," I gasped, stepping back, pressing my hands over my mouth. "No, no, no."
The image from ads 3_2.jpg replayed in my mind, but this time, the filter of jealousy and betrayal was stripped away. I saw the pallor of Cassidy's skin. I saw the desperate, frantic tension in Damian's shoulders. I remembered the wet, broken way she had whispered my name.
It wasn't guilt.
It was terror.
She was reaching for me.
"You dropped the sonogram," Damian whispered, staring at the floor as if he could still see the two blue circles. "You ran. I couldn't leave her to chase you. I had to keep pressure on the wound. I screamed for the medics, but by the time they arrived..."
He closed his eyes, the memory physically destroying him.
"She died, Vivien. Cassidy bled to death in my arms three minutes after you got on that elevator. And then I spent the next four hours calling your phone, begging you to answer so I could tell you that your sister was gone. But you were already a ghost."
My knees gave out. I collapsed onto the floor, the truth hitting me with the force of a freight train. For four years, I had hated my sister. I had cursed her name. I had ripped her out of my heart, believing she had destroyed my marriage.
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Instead, she had been murdered. And I had walked away from her in her final moments.
Damian was beside me in an instant. He didn't hesitate. He pulled me into his chest, wrapping his large, strong arms around my shaking frame. I buried my face in his wet suit jacket and screamed. I screamed for the years I had lost, for the hatred I had harbored, and for the little sister who had died terrified on a marble desk.
